1. Field of the Invention
The device of this invention resides in the area of equipment for the baking of pre-boiled bagels and more particularly relates to a bagel board turning device which allows for the turning of multiple bagel boards within an oven environment.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Bagel boards originally were, and in many cases still are, wooden pallets on which rows of bagels, after boiling, are inserted into a traditional oven for baking. In the prior art, after the bagels dry on one side by the oven's heat, the bagel boards are manually flipped over so that the bagels fall off onto the shelf of the oven on their other side so that the bagels can be baked.
The prior art for bagels cooked in rotary ovens includes U.S. Pat. No. 4,790,241 to John Lugo for a Bagel Board Device. This patent discloses a structure having a carriage with boards pivotally mounted on one side by a system of levers to support and turn over the bagels thereon onto the oven shelf below. However, once inserted into the oven, this prior art device is both difficult to reach and to move the mechanism to turn the bagel boards. Not only is it inconvenient and uncomfortable to reach into a hot oven and difficult to manipulate the mechanism to turn the boards, but also utilization of the Lugo device requires a baker to have an extremely long reach as well as great strength. A baker of short stature must literally extend his upper torso into the oven to operate the Lugo device. Moreover, since great force must be exerted as the bagel boards are hard to turn, such force moves the entire Lugo carriage laterally, requiring that expensive customization be done to install side rails to retain the carriage in place on each oven shelf of the rotary oven. A further customization of the oven required by the use of the Lugo device therein is the lowering of the peel plate of the oven to allow better access by the baker so that the baker can then bend at the waist in order to more easily reach in and operate the Lugo device.
Lugo pivots its bagel boards along a side edge of each board by a complex system of levers which movement allows the bagels to come off each board onto the rotary oven shelf in a position off to the side of the original position of each board. The endmost area of the Lugo device cannot be used for a bagel board to be positioned in as this endmost area must be available for a row of bagels to be deposited onto from the bagel board adjacent to such endmost area.